


Fever (When You Hold Me Tight)

by irisbleufic



Series: Delicate, Dangerous, Obsessed [8]
Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Awkward Sexual Situations, Bad Ideas, Breakfast, Canon Autistic Character, Canon Queer Character, Canon Queer Relationship, Coitus Interruptus, Established Relationship, How Do I Tag, Idiots in Love, Inspired by Music, Kitchen Sex, Lazy Mornings, M/M, Murder Husbands, Nostalgia, POV Oswald Cobblepot, Singing, Slow Dancing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-22
Updated: 2017-05-22
Packaged: 2018-11-03 15:15:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10969905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irisbleufic/pseuds/irisbleufic
Summary: Striding back into the kitchen, Edward halted before Oswald as if presenting himself for approval.“I'm afraid there aren't multiple tracks,” he explained, as if in apology. “It's just this and a B-side.”Oswald nodded, watching Edward's tongue dart out nervously as the unfamiliar vocalist began to sing.[Another bonus ficlet with an eye toward intimacy and humor.  Set betweenWYFIR #20andWYFIR #21.]





	Fever (When You Hold Me Tight)

The turntable across the room gave over to soft, cyclical static as Oswald laughed with Edward over the remnants of their late breakfast. They'd given Olga the previous day off and instructed her not to return until January second. It had been the most eventful New Year's Eve in Oswald's recent memory, and, miraculously, he didn't have a hangover. He supposed he had Edward's quest to thank for that.

They'd spent the previous evening cornering, interrogating, and killing one of Gotham's most bewilderingly beloved intellectuals. Or, rather, _Edward_ had done the interrogating, and Oswald had waited outside the writer's residence with Gabriel, armed, listening to the proceedings via earpiece.

“The look on his face when he realized he wasn't getting out of it alive,” Edward wheezed, setting his fork down so that he could swipe tears of mirth from beneath his glasses with both index fingers.

“I should thank you for ensuring, on both fronts, that we'll never need to make another appearance at GPL for purposes of presenting him with an award,” Oswald managed, dabbing at his eyes with the untouched portion of his napkin. “Who builds a career writing not just histories, but _fiction_ based on an entire city's waste-management infrastructure, I ask you?”

“The erstwhile Kyle Davis, clearly,” said Edward, depositing his silverware neatly on top of what remained of his mushroom-and-gruyère crêpe. “And—you're welcome. We're better off without both city hall _and_ his insufferable, opinion-laced prose in the _Gazette_.”

“Ed, it's been a pleasure watching you cook again,” Oswald said, lashes purposefully lowered over a final sip of his Lady Grey. “I think the last time I got to watch you at work was in your old place.”

Edward frowned, swilling what was left in his teacup, deciding he didn't want it. “But I made you—”

“Those eggs back in November don't count,” Oswald insisted, stacking both saucer and teacup atop his empty plate. “You snuck out of bed to make them and covered my eyes the whole way to the table.”

“It's a pleasure watching you actually _eat_ what I cook,” Edward replied, following suit with as much of the remaining dishware as he could reach. “You even turned up your nose at a glass of water.”

“It had a _straw_!” Oswald snapped, collecting his knife and fork. “I know you were trying to make sure I didn't choke, but you have no idea how patronizing I found that under the circumstances.”

Edward sobered, pushing his chair back, rising perilously with the clattering stack of dishes in hand.

“No more straws, check,” he said indicating with a nod that Oswald should pick up his smaller pile and follow him to the kitchen. “You don't have to help me wash up, but I'd appreciate the company.”

“You forget how much dish-washing experience is on my résumé,” Oswald reminded him, leaving his cane behind at the table. “The record's dead,” he added, lagging slightly behind, catching up with Edward at the sink, where he'd already put on Olga's rubber gloves and begun to fill the basin. “Should I go back out and put something else on for while we work?”

Edward took Oswald's stack of dishes and sank them neatly in the steaming suds, turning again to look Oswald up and down with arresting, dreamlike focus. He plucked off the gloves, draping them over the spigot, and backed Oswald up against the marble countertop with a chaste kiss.

“I'll do it,” he said quickly, making sure Oswald had a hand on the surface behind him for support.

“It's almost two o'clock on New Year's Day!” shouted Oswald, with baffled sarcasm, tapping his fingers against the marble as he waited. “Nobody's in a rush to get anything done, least of all me!”

The needle's scratch as Edward lowered it onto another record met Oswald's ears, almost too faint to discern. He braced himself with arms stretched wide, both palms against the edge of the counter now, startled at the familiar bass riff that reached his ears over the sound of Edward's returning footsteps. He should've recognized the song.

Striding back into the kitchen, Edward halted before Oswald as if presenting himself for approval.

“I'm afraid there aren't multiple tracks,” he explained, as if in apology. “It's just this and a B-side.”

Oswald nodded, watching Edward's tongue dart out nervously as the unfamiliar vocalist began to sing.

_You never know how much I love you,_  
_never know how much I care._  
_When you put your arms around me,_  
_I get a feelin' that's so hard to bear._

_You give me fever_  
_when you kiss me,_  
_fever when you hold me tight._  
_Fever in the mornin',_  
_an' fever all through the night._

“This isn't the version my mother listened to,” Oswald said, distracted as Edward set both hands on his hips and stepped even closer. “I always just assumed that this song was by Peggy Lee.”

“That's the 1958 cover,” Edward explained, abruptly in info-dump mode even though Oswald had brought a hand up to stroke the slight, stubbly rasp of his cheek. “ _This_ is the 1956 original. It was written by Eddie Cooley and Otis Blackwell, although Blackwell used the pseudonym John Davenport. The voice you're hearing is Little Willie John, and you'll probably notice before too long that a couple of iconic verses are missing. It's because Lee wrote the Romeo-Juliet and Pocahontas-John Smith ones herself and included them in what went on to become the most popular—”

“Ed,” Oswald muttered, going up on tiptoe so that his breath ghosted across Edward's lips, “shut up.”

“Oh,” Edward said, wrapping an arm around Oswald's waist even as Oswald brought Edward's arm into the position he'd require to lead them. “ _Oh_. Right,” he continued, swallowing, nonetheless whisking Oswald in a competent circuit around the center island. “But I didn't get to ask—”

“Yes, you _may_ have this dance,” Oswald sighed, unable to contain his laughter in spite of how distracted both Edward's charming, jittery demeanor and the song's lyrics continued to render him.

_Listen to me, baby,_  
_hear ev'ry word I say—_  
_no one can love you the way I do,_  
_'cause they don't know how_  
_to love you my way._

_You give me fever—_

“You do,” said Oswald, fervently, stumbling such that he had to let go of Edward's hand and catch his balance against the marble edge of the island, jostling Edward into him. “It was all I could think about.”

“When?” Edward asked, breathing fast, taking point from Oswald's encouraging nod as he lifted Oswald onto the counter. He stepped between Oswald's parted thighs, impatiently loosening his dressing gown and then Oswald's. “I, _ah_ —well, confession for confession, _this_ —”

“Is right up there with your limousine fantasy, I know,” Oswald cut in, shivering as Edward exposed him from collarbone to calves to the kitchen's chill. “This was a clever trap on your part.”

“It's not a trap,” Edward gasped as Oswald locked his ankles at the backs of Edward's thighs. He moaned at both the press of skin against skin and the bruising scrape of Oswald's teeth at his neck. “Oswald, you were...you were telling me about...”

Breathlessly, Oswald hummed along for a bar and then caught up, singing right into Edward's ear.

_Fever in the mornin',_  
_an' fever all through the night._

_Bless my soul, I love you—_  
_take this heart away._  
_Take these arms I'll never use, an' just_  
_believe in what my lips have to say._

“The day I asked you to come home for dinner at eight,” he said without pausing for breath off the end of the phrase, noting how deliciously tense Edward had gone in his embrace. “I tried to get some sleep that afternoon, but I couldn't,” he continued in a whisper, trailing one of his hands awkwardly, in the tight space between them, down to Edward's erection. “All I could think about was what I'd say to you that night, how you'd react, what you'd look like when I led you upstairs...”

“Is that all?” Edward gasped, helplessly pushing into the touch, head dropping to Oswald's shoulder.

Oswald shook his head as the record crooned, drunk on the sound. He trailed open-mouthed kisses from Edward's temple to his cheek while Edward's fingertips dug into Oswald's shoulder blades.

_Sun lights up the daytime;_  
_moon lights up the night._  
_My eyes light up when you call my name_  
_'cause I know you're gonna treat me right._

“I thought about having you naked beside me,” Oswald went on, beyond shame at the memory, gut clenching with the way Edward whimpered when he stopped paying attention to him just long enough to give himself a few strokes. “About kissing you, touching you like this,” he panted, letting go so he could crush Edward to him with a pointed thrust, “while I touched myself.”

“ _Oswald_ ,” Edward groaned, shuddering into climax before he could properly start to move.

What happened next, Oswald couldn't begin to parse until the song's humming, seductive conclusion—interspersed with the shattering, white-noise rush of his own orgasm—gave way to another sound that should not, under any circumstances, have been there.

Frozen in the doorway, Olga cursed an incomprehensible string of Russian, turning her face away.

“It is rude and unnecessary!” she concluded vehemently. “I leave my phone here, is why I...”

Edward heaved a mortified gasp and buried his face even more fully in the crook of Oswald's neck.

“Why did it take you so long to _realize_ that?” Oswald blurted, one hand flying to the back of Edward's head, his instinct to protect Edward overriding whatever embarrassment he might have felt otherwise. “Don't tell me it's here in the kitchen! We haven't seen it,” he continued angrily, unhooking his ankles so that Edward's rucked-up dressing gown fell to cover as much of him as possible. “Olga, what the _hell_? It's your day off!”

“I am not cleaning counter and floor,” she snapped, back already turned, arms folded across her chest as she began to march away. “Is bad enough you leave handkerchiefs on coffee table when—” 

“Tell her to remember her phone from now on,” Edward said shakily, “and to text before she arrives.”

“Ed says you're to keep better tabs on your phone!” Oswald shouted. “And start texting before you—”

“I have _ears_!” Olga roared, producing a clatter that could only mean she'd pulled out both of the dining-table drawers and dumped their contents on the floor. “There, I find phone! _Happy_?”

“Yes, that's fucking marvelous!” Oswald screeched, feeling his cheeks heat. “Now get _out_!”

Edward remained where he was, his arms tightening around Oswald, until the front door slammed.

“At least I got to cross this one off my list,” he said, straightening his glasses as he lifted his head.

Somewhere between disbelieving hilarity and abject fury, Oswald smacked him where it counted.

“You'll be lucky if I _ever_ let you have your way in the car, Ed. You can hold me to that.”

**Author's Note:**

> Listen to the referenced versions of _Fever_ [**here**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y27vBA68Zyk) (the one playing in the story) and [**here**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RI5n-ae01Xk) (the one Oswald's mother loved); the lyrics are [**here**](https://genius.com/Little-willie-john-fever-lyrics) and [**here**](https://genius.com/Peggy-lee-fever-lyrics). I recently heard Bernadette Peters sing this live and got hung up on [**the echo early on in _WYFIR_**](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10605213/chapters/23533803).


End file.
